Nepalese Participating in Pako Festa – the Biggest of its kind in Australia

Nepalese Community is going to participate first time in Pako Festa that will held on 23rd of February, 2013. Different organizations from Melbourne and Ballarat will join the festival and Lumbini-Kapilvastu Day Movement effort will to introduce Nepal as the birthplace of Buddha. In the festival Miss Nepal Australia, 2012 Deepashree Shah will perform Kumari dance.

Pako Festa, now in its thirty-first year, is Geelong’s much loved, award-winning, free, annual community arts festival – the biggest of its kind in Australia. Managed by Diversitat and held on the last weekend of February in Pakington Street, Geelong West, “the multicultural heart of Geelong”, it incorporates an extravagant street parade featuring around ninety floats and hundreds of performers representing forty-five affiliated ethnic communities and around sixty other community groups and organisations. The street is lined with stalls selling traditional foods and arts and crafts, and nine separate stages in the precinct offer performances of music and dance as well as interactive workshops and exhibitions. Pako Festa has become Victoria’s premier multicultural event, attended by well over 100,000 people in each of the last three years and estimated to inject close to $2.5 million dollars into the local economy just over the course of the day itself.

Pako Festa offers a unique opportunity for those 100,000-plus participants to socialise and celebrate in an arena of ethnic diversity and harmony, as well as gaining an appreciation of the great variety of artistic and cultural expression within Geelong’s multicultural community

The Pako Festa Street Parade starts at 11am, embodies Colour, Culture & Celebration and is one of the most important events at Pako Festa! Encapsulating the very essence of our nation – diversity, dynamism and colorfulness, and above all else cooperation, community inter-connectedness, creativity and the promotion of our humanity – Pako Festa sends a strong message in these troubled times in which we live: our preparedness to interact with, work with and treat each other with dignity and respect demolishes the walls of division and conflicts; bringing everyone together in a spirit of understanding, acceptance and celebration of life itself.

A very important aspect of Pako Festa lies in its provision as a vehicle for the CALD communities to affirm and honour their contribution to Pako Festa over its 31-year history.